Doesn’t time fly. February already. So, it is definitely time to tell you about all the great things that PSI are doing this year. Whether that is our planned events, our Annual Conference taking place in Amsterdam in June or telling you more about plans to better serve our members.
Firstly, starting with you, our members. I am delighted that membership of PSI is strong and grew to nearly 2000 at the end of 2023. The Board has agreed that maintaining membership at that level would be a fantastic aim and we would like to focus in 2024 on how best to serve our growing membership.
At the end of 2023 the Board agreed our Diversity and Inclusion statement which has now been placed on our website. I don’t see this as change in direction, but more an acknowledgement that the Board considers that Diversity and Inclusion play an important role in everything we do and we want to ensure that continues. There will be an annual review of Diversity and Inclusion at a Board meeting where any issues or areas for improvement can be discussed and acted upon.
Work continues on the Digital Strategy. The Board's current focus is a more accessible collaborative work space and improvements to the website. As every change comes with some downsides, we are carefully trialling some of the planned changes before spending money to ensure they really benefit you. This is especially relevant where corporate firewalls might block file sharing sites, websites might have accessibility issues, and referral links might get blocked by ad blockers. Expect to hear more about changes as the year goes on.
After a very busy end to 2023 in terms of the number of events (20 in the last quarter), it is looking like 2024 is going to be another year packed full of great events. We already have training courses on R and machine learning planned as well as more for later in the year. There are SIG events planned by the visualisation SIG, pre-clinical SIG and the HTA SIG, again with more to follow soon. Thank you so much to everyone involved in our events, organisers, speakers and attendees. Sharing scientific content and ideas is such a key part of what PSI is about and we really appreciate all the time that goes into the wide variety of events that PSI offers. Please keep an eye on the website where you can find details of all these events and more here.
This year’s Annual Conference is in Amsterdam from 16th to 19th June 2024. All the details can be found here. I was delighted to see over 190 submissions to present at the conference this year. This is incredible. A big thank you to the conference committee for all the hard work so far in planning the conference and reading all the proposals and making the decision on who can speak at the conference this year. Sorry so many of you were unsuccessful but there is only space for between 60-70 presentations.
If you are interested in exhibiting at or sponsoring the conference please reach out to Aiden Flynn (aiden.flynn@exploristics.com) as these opportunities are at a premium so best act sooner rather than later.
Our SIG community is growing. PSI/EFSPI will soon have 23 SIGs, with new SIGs for Causal Inference, Patient-Focused Drug Development and Software Engineering joining our SIG community shortly.
PSI is very active in promoting statistics in the pharmaceutical industry as a career in schools and at universities. We had very successful in person Medical Statistics Careers Event in Sheffield and an online webinar MEDMATHS at the end of 2023. We are currently building upon schools outreach by developing a Careers Outreach Champions distribution list. We have a number of ongoing professional development initiatives to support our members including the mentoring scheme, book club as well as quarterly networking events for the career young.
We will soon see some changes on the Board. At the conference in June we will be electing 4 new board members. This is an exciting opportunity for people to join the Board of Directors. If you interested in joining us, the following positions will be available:
Membership Director (currently Kate Tsirtsonis: kbendall@amgen.com )
SIG Director (currently Adam Crisp: adam.x.crisp@gsk.com)
Treasurer (currently Markus Elze: markus.elze@roche.com)
Vice-Chair (currently Chrissie Fletcher: chrissie.a.fletcher@gsk.com)
If you have any questions about the positions that are seeking nominations please feel free to reach out to the current Board member in that position (or me: david.wright1@astrazeneca.com). You can read more about the available positions here with further detail on the job specifications to be added in the coming weeks. The deadline for nominations is Tuesday 9 April 2024, with election results announced at the AGM in June.
I look forward to seeing many of you in Amsterdam in June or at one of the many meetings we are planning this year.
David Wright
PSI Chair
